3 ms·

Why is the usability bad? Pages are pleasant to read in that aspect ratio and it seems to provide a good solution to what to do with the bits around the edges.

by 314 12y ago

Why is the usability bad? Pages are pleasant to read in that aspect ratio and it seems to provide a good solution to what to do with the bits around the edges. I like the stack of places that I've been before as context and think that it encourages exploration and clicking around more than the original site.

detaro 12y ago
I'd actually prefer the panes to be a bit wider, but that's not that important. What I find weird is that I can go 2 layers back on the same page, but then I suddenly have to use the browser's back button to go further up. I have to use the back button to close the right-most pane. And sometimes the back button does not work, or I have to use it multiple times to get "one step" back. Loading times feel worse, because you stare at a blank rectangle and wonder "is this article empty" and then it suddenly pops in. I accidentally dragged a paragraph around and had to go back to the front page and follow a link there to remove the local copy I created. I also don't know how I would publish that copy if it were an intentional edit. I'm sure it makes sense once you've understood it, but discoverability seems bad. Despite all its flaws TiddlyWiki seems to get the basic SPA wiki UI "more right" to me.
HelloNurse 12y ago
Delayed display of text is terribly bad. Consider the following scenario: 1) I click a link to "Decorator Pattern". 2) A new panel with the title and no text appears. 3) I assume a major malfunction. 4) The text of the page deigns to appear. Then I tried clicking on "Category: Pattern" and page text took about a minute, not a few seconds. Regarding the "stack" of previously read pages, it offers a typical stack behaviour: it can be blown away easily and efficiently. You can forget large pieces of history by the apparently harmless interaction of clicking on links in a previous pane.
- 314 12y ago
  That sounds like server load, more than anything on the client side. When I used it everything was instant and snappy, so it might just depend on the number of visitors. Blowing away the stack by clicking is a bit of a pain. A couple of times something buggy happened where new pages overwrote some part of the old stack, but left the rest of it in place. I would like to see some option for expanding multiple branches at one level, but at that point it is probably a UI specifically for me rather than something that is generally usable. One thing that was cute was that the stack of pages is exposed in the URL, which suggests that some nice greasemonkey tricks would be viable.
  - HelloNurse 12y ago
    "That sounds like server load, more than anything on the client side." You are missing the point: with a normal page, server load looks like server load, whereas with "dynamic" tricks server load looks like a defective page and what you see cannot be considered the true content of the page.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      There's no reason the page can't display some sort of progress indicator while it waits for data. If it doesn't actually do this here then that's silly, but that's a problem with the implementation, not the concept. I'm seeing more and more apps that perform potentially long-running tasks (usually involving network access) without any indication that anything is happening. It's frustrating.
cousin_it 12y ago
A website's job is serving up pieces of information. Helping me navigate that information is the browser's job. That's why we have amazing innovations like the back button, tabbed browsing, and bookmarks. Imagine a world where every website had its own buggy implementation of those. Also, simplicity of core architecture leads to diversity of tools. If Google's first crawler had to execute JavaScript and make sense of single page applications, Google wouldn't exist today. So be careful when you encourage websites to become more complicated. Tim Bray said it well in 2003: "Browsers are more usable because they're less flexible." https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePl...
- tragic 12y ago
  > That's why we have amazing innovations like the back button, tabbed browsing, and bookmarks. Imagine a world where every website had its own buggy implementation of those. Heh. We had a requirement to put in a back button. We put it in. Since no decent criteria were available to specify how it behaved, we just called history.back(). They did some user testing. Then they asked us to take it out again. Never have I enjoyed taking on a ticket like I enjoyed taking out that stupid bloody back button.
vegedor 12y ago
A linear stack does not represent my browsing habits too well. If it would, couldn't I just use the history? Although there is difference in UX, i.e. the visual clue where I came from is hidden in a context menu, the use case is the same.

by 314 12y ago

detaro 12y ago

I'd actually prefer the panes to be a bit wider, but that's not that important. What I find weird is that I can go 2 layers back on the same page, but then I suddenly have to use the browser's back button to go further up. I have to use the back button to close the right-most pane. And sometimes the back button does not work, or I have to use it multiple times to get "one step" back. Loading times feel worse, because you stare at a blank rectangle and wonder "is this article empty" and then it suddenly pops in. I accidentally dragged a paragraph around and had to go back to the front page and follow a link there to remove the local copy I created. I also don't know how I would publish that copy if it were an intentional edit. I'm sure it makes sense once you've understood it, but discoverability seems bad. Despite all its flaws TiddlyWiki seems to get the basic SPA wiki UI "more right" to me.

HelloNurse 12y ago

Delayed display of text is terribly bad. Consider the following scenario: 1) I click a link to "Decorator Pattern". 2) A new panel with the title and no text appears. 3) I assume a major malfunction. 4) The text of the page deigns to appear. Then I tried clicking on "Category: Pattern" and page text took about a minute, not a few seconds. Regarding the "stack" of previously read pages, it offers a typical stack behaviour: it can be blown away easily and efficiently. You can forget large pieces of history by the apparently harmless interaction of clicking on links in a previous pane.

314 12y ago
That sounds like server load, more than anything on the client side. When I used it everything was instant and snappy, so it might just depend on the number of visitors. Blowing away the stack by clicking is a bit of a pain. A couple of times something buggy happened where new pages overwrote some part of the old stack, but left the rest of it in place. I would like to see some option for expanding multiple branches at one level, but at that point it is probably a UI specifically for me rather than something that is generally usable. One thing that was cute was that the stack of pages is exposed in the URL, which suggests that some nice greasemonkey tricks would be viable.
- HelloNurse 12y ago
  "That sounds like server load, more than anything on the client side." You are missing the point: with a normal page, server load looks like server load, whereas with "dynamic" tricks server load looks like a defective page and what you see cannot be considered the true content of the page.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    There's no reason the page can't display some sort of progress indicator while it waits for data. If it doesn't actually do this here then that's silly, but that's a problem with the implementation, not the concept. I'm seeing more and more apps that perform potentially long-running tasks (usually involving network access) without any indication that anything is happening. It's frustrating.

cousin_it 12y ago

A website's job is serving up pieces of information. Helping me navigate that information is the browser's job. That's why we have amazing innovations like the back button, tabbed browsing, and bookmarks. Imagine a world where every website had its own buggy implementation of those. Also, simplicity of core architecture leads to diversity of tools. If Google's first crawler had to execute JavaScript and make sense of single page applications, Google wouldn't exist today. So be careful when you encourage websites to become more complicated. Tim Bray said it well in 2003: "Browsers are more usable because they're less flexible." https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePl...

tragic 12y ago
> That's why we have amazing innovations like the back button, tabbed browsing, and bookmarks. Imagine a world where every website had its own buggy implementation of those. Heh. We had a requirement to put in a back button. We put it in. Since no decent criteria were available to specify how it behaved, we just called history.back(). They did some user testing. Then they asked us to take it out again. Never have I enjoyed taking on a ticket like I enjoyed taking out that stupid bloody back button.

vegedor 12y ago

A linear stack does not represent my browsing habits too well. If it would, couldn't I just use the history? Although there is difference in UX, i.e. the visual clue where I came from is hidden in a context menu, the use case is the same.